The BDC, the city's economic development agency, is to receive two grants of $200,000 each after Oct. 1 to assess sites for contamination with hazardous substances or specifically with petroleum products.

Shawn M. Garvin, the EPA's Mid-Atlantic regional administrator, said the grant funding is intended to serve as a catalyst for urban revitalization. He noted that the agency has given the city $1.6 million in brownfields redevelopment grants since 1995.

The announcement was made at 1111 Light St. in Federal Hill, a $35 million residential and office redevelopment of a former department store where arsenic in the soil and an old underground fuel tank complicated the project, said Gary Suskauer, the BDC's brownfields program director.